The News
reported, ‘He said he was accused of having stolen the phone and would be
lashed until he revealed where it was.

‘The teenager said he told the officers that he did
not know where it was or how it got lost but instead the officers instructed
him to strip off his trousers and lie on the floor.’

The newspaper reported the boy saying, ‘One officer
put his foot on the back of my neck while the other one lashed me twice with
the sjambok.’

The boy told police he did not know where the phone
was. The newspaper reported, ‘Tears and screams did not help as he was told to
say where the phone was.

‘He said he maintained his position that he had no
idea where it was and the officers allegedly said they would not release him
until he spoke the truth. The confused and hurt young boy did not know what
else to say since what was truth to him was not accepted by the police.’

The boy was forced to lie down on the cold stone floor
and he was whipped once more, while a police officer’s foot pinned him down.

The News
described the incident as ‘one of the worst cases of brutality’.

Police in Swaziland, where King Mswati III rules as
sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, routinely use torture.

In September 2016, women
were reportedly ambushed by armed police and ‘brutally attacked’ by police
during a strike at the Plantation Forest Company, near Pigg’s Peak.

The Observer on Saturday newspaper on 17 September 2016 reported what
it called a ‘horror’ attack. It said a private security company called Siyavutsa assisted police.

The newspaper reported the attack happened at
4.45pm on Friday 9 September. A group of workers left the plantation premises
and walked along a main road to their compound, Goedgegun, about 5 km away. ‘When
all of a sudden a Siyavutsa vehicle swerved and came to an abrupt stop in front
of the first group of about five workers and a swarm of armed police officers
and dog handlers alighted.’

The newspaper added, ‘The different groups of about
15 workers allege that they all ran in different directions while the officers
were in pursuit striking indiscriminately at anyone falling down. The women
claim that the police officers alighted with rifles and batons while Siyavutsa
dog handlers followed suit with the dogs. Shots were fired in the air while
other officers bridged their service weapons.’

The newspaper added, ‘Vice Secretary of the Workers
Union Wendy Simelane said she was struck with a baton by an officer identified
as Manqoba Vilakati on the shin before she was dragged and thrown into a police
van that had arrived to beef up the contingent on the scene.’

The Observer on Saturday reported, ‘It was
then they, together with a handful of others, were driven deep into one of the
forests. On the way the vehicle swerved to its sides making its cargo bang on
the sides with their heads. By then all their mobile telephones were
confiscated. At the swamp inside the forest the beatings continued with their
assailants stomping on their arms and legs, including Simelane’s fractured leg.

The
newspaper reported Simelane saying, ‘“All this time we pleaded with them why we
were being assaulted but to deaf ears. By then my lower part of the leg was dangling
signalling that the shin was shattered. At the same time, we were forced to do
press-ups but I could not because my leg could not hold any longer,”’

The Observer reported that the police used
wood stumps and branches from around the swamp to inflict more injury to the
workers. They were then dragged and thrown into the police van, driven back to
Mhlatane station where they found Siyavutsa guards waiting for their turn.

Later,
they were taken to Pigg’s Peak police station ‘for another bout of torturing’.
The newspaper reported that Simelane was tortured by being suffocated with a
plastic bag until she vomited. She was forced into signing a confession that
she had started fires in the forest.

This was one in a long series of torture cases
involving police or security forces in Swaziland.

In June 2016, a United Nations review panel looking
into human rights in Swaziland was told in a joint report by four organisations
working to improve human rights, ‘In Mbabane [the Swazi capital], police
tortured a 15-year-old boy after his mother had reported him for stealing
E85.00 (US$6). The boy alleges that he was beaten with a slasher (metal blade
tool for cutting grass) and knobkerrie (club) for five hours. While enduring
the pain, he alleges that he was made to count the strokes aloud for the police
to hear. Instead of being charged, the boy was physically assaulted and made to
sit in a chair for thirty minutes before he was sent back home.’

The report
was submitted to the United Human Rights Council
Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of Swaziland by the Swaziland
Multi-Media Community Network, Swaziland Concerned Church Leaders, Swaziland
Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations and Constituent Assembly –
Swaziland.

They also reported the case of Phumelela Mkhweli, a
political activist who died after an alleged assault by police after they
arrested him.

The report also stated, ‘In April 2011, a 66-year-old
woman was confronted by three police officers regarding the wording on her
t-shirt and headscarf. The police allegedly pulled off her T-shirt, throttled
her, banged her head against the wall, sexually molested her, kicked her and
threw her against a police truck.

‘The US Department of State reported on many
allegations of torture and ill-treatment by police; including beatings and
temporary suffocation using rubber tube tied around the face, nose, and mouth,
or plastic bags over the head,’ the report stated.

In addition to those cases reported to the United
Nations review panel, there have been numerous reports of torture by police and
military personnel in Swaziland over the past few years.

In July 2015, Swazi MP Titus Thwala reported that Swaziland soldiers
beat up old ladies so badly they had to be taken to their homes in
wheelbarrows. He said that elderly women were among the local residents who
were regularly beaten by soldiers at informal crossing points between Swaziland
and South Africa. Thwala said the soldiers made people do push ups and other
exercises.

In 2011, a man was
reportedly beaten with guns and tortured for three hours by
soldiers who accused him of showing them disrespect. He was ordered to do press
ups, frog jumps and told to run across a very busy road and was beaten with
guns every time he tried to resist. His crime was that he tried to talk to a
man whose vehicle was being searched by soldiers at Maphiveni.

The Army in Swaziland, in effect, has a shoot-to-kill
policy. In May 2011, three
unarmed South African men were shot dead by Swazi soldiers
when they were caught trying to smuggle four cows from Swaziland into the
Republic.

In July 2011, three armed soldiers left a manfor dead after
he tried to help a woman they were beating up. And in a separate incident, a
woman was beaten
by two soldiers after she tried to stop them talking to
her sister.

In January 2010 soldiers were warned that their
attacks on civilians amounted to a ‘shoot
to kill’ policy and this was unconstitutional.

There have been many accounts of soldiers killing or
beating up civilians, including a cold-blooded
murder of two women accused of smuggling a car across the
border with South Africa; a man who had five
bullets pumped into his body after being beaten to a pulp; an
attack
on sex workers after three soldiers refused to pay them
for their services; an attack by a bus load of soldiers on a security
guard after he asked them to move their vehicle; and five
drunk soldiers who terrorised two boys, smashing
one of them to a pulp.